Gzz Home Page

2003-02-26: The Gzz project will cease to exist.
Using a patented technology (zzStructure) that will not be openly
licensed is strictly against the free software philosophy. The code that
constitutes Gzz and is not dependent on zzStructure will be split into
new projects in a layerwise fashion: some will depend on others but
with as much independence as possible. This will enable reuse by
others.

There will be an overall project called Fenfire which
will depend on all the others. Fenfire is the whole we're
working towards.

We apologize the last year of silence.

2002-04-14: Name change. The project formerly known
as GZigZag is now called Gzz.

2002-03-08: Upcoming name change.
Ted Nelson has asked us, due to trademark considerations, not to use
the name GZigZag any more. We shall comply with this and
will announce the new name shortly, as soon as we come up with
it. Once we have the new name, we will release version 0.6.4 with
most likely only the name changed.

2002-03-07: News: GZigZag 0.6.3 is released.
This is a stable release. We recommend that all users switch to using
the 0.6.x series. For information on getting GZigZag, refer to the download page

2001-10-09: Problem with 0.6.1
We've noticed that 0.6.1 doesn't work properly on JDK 1.3.0.
This is due to Sun changing the method AWTEvent.consume() to protected.
We will release 0.6.2, fixing this problem shortly. In the meantime,
try 0.6.0 which does not have this problem.
Additionally, for Linux glibc-2.2, note
Sun's note about crashes in 1.3.0 and 1.3.1
: stack size must be limited.

2001-10-01:
Xanalogical links between different cells quoting
the same PDF file!
We now have, in the default ZZ space that the current CVS rewrite
(to be released as 0.8.0 Real Soon Now(tm)) some Xanadu model spans
included from a foreign PDF file, and a visualization which shows
the other cells which quote the same file.

(Screenshot)
Note that the screenshot is VERY wide (1023 pixels) so you may have
to scroll to see the other side. There are three reduced-size PDF pages
on the image, and the two on the right-hand side are shown
only because they quote the same mediaserver block containing
the same pdf file. No explicit connection was created between
the cells!

This has a momentous significance: whenever you write another comment
on the same PDF file, they are all interconnected and never lost in the depths
of the system somewhere. "Copying" bits of sources is equivalent to building
a hyperstructure. All the hard work is finally starting to pay off -
we are using this system ourselves to start putting together a good
picture of hypermedia literature for ourselves.

Ted Nelson's zzstructure (trademarked as ZigZag(tm)) is a new way
of putting information into computers, kind of a crossing between a
database, a filesystem, a personal information manager and many
others. And even that isn't sufficient to describe it: it's simply
something new. The intention is to have some screenshots up here at
some point but we haven't had the time yet.

Gzz is an open-source free software project implementing Zzstructure
architecture. Zzstructure is an invention of Ted Nelson, and ZigZag is
his trademark for it.
ZigZag is no
longer used in the name Gzz (it used to be used with permission).

Gzz is not an acronym, it's a buZZword.

Gzz is hosted at Savannah (see links in the margin), and of the
features provided we use CVS, two mailing lists (gzz-announce and
gzz-commits), there is another mailing list at Xanadu, and the task
manager. The other features are currently not in use.

Gzz is directed by Tuomas J. Lukka and implemented by him and
others.
You are welcome to join in, please read the documentation and talk to Tuomas
at lukka@iki.fi.